The moment when the mud stuck to talk of "change" and "choice" in politics was in mid-2006, when Armando Iannucci's Time Trumpet synched speeches by Tony Blair and David Cameron to David Bowie's Changes. "Change" and "choice" had become the c-words of Labour's early reign, and they are now slapped on to any initiative or policy the government or the opposition wish to sell.

If you really want to effect change, you have to let things happen that are outside your control. If you really want to give people "choice", some of those choices must be things you do not, yourself, favour. Labour has proven itself incapable of recognising these simple truths.

Take eco-towns - the germ of a visionary and wonderful idea that many communities would seize on. They would challenge the basic premise, take different approaches to solve the same problems - why are some of the proposed sites on greenfield and protected land? Why do they have to be new developments at all? How will the inhabitants of existing towns get to work? When you question an idea, you uncover its flaws, fix them, and make it stronger.

But because eco-towns will spring up fully formed as the result of central edicts, local environmentalists, retired headteachers, wildlife trusts and even Lib Dem parliamentary candidates have had to take up arms against them. Take the case of Micheldever in Hampshire, described by the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Winchester, Martin Tod, as an "un-eco eco-town", a greenwash proposal instantly taken up by local developers in a scramble to revive a failed 1970s project, which would put huge pressures on the existing transport networks of the region.

After four months' intense campaigning, including the largest anti eco-town petition in the country, the government dropped Micheldever from its proposal list. Outcomes: a washed-up project, a lot of angry people who won't be so sanguine about "environmental" causes next time, and private developers deterred after nearly a year's encouragement. Labour has managed to turn some of the most environmentally aware demographics in the UK against an environmental project. Deprived of the opportunity to question and amend, they had no choice but to oppose. This is an absurd triumph for authoritarian centralism.

Labour has come to believe that the imposition of Westminster bubble solutions will provide change and choice. Look at the stark difference between Ed Balls' enthusiastic embrace of localism in 2002 and his heavy-handed school reform package announced this week. Anything goes, so long as we've thought of it first and provided guidelines for its implementation. Pick a choice, any choice, so long as it's this one - eco-towns, primary care trusts, PFI, city academies, special status schools, polyclinics...

The point is not that any of these things are bad ideas. Some are good ideas, in whole or in part. Nor is the point that private provision is always a disaster. It isn't. The point is that a dangerous belief in the virtues of uniformity drives each and every one of these initiatives. Labour will never perceive the subtle irony of a system that purports to provide "choice" being imposed on people who don't want that system. The two boxes none of us are ever allowed to tick are the ones that say "YES" or "NO", which is why we'll have to do it at the next election instead.

And the truly heartbreaking thing is - whisper it - we do want change. That current of feeling that Labour picked up on over the mid-1990s is still there, and all the stronger for being unsatisfied. It's just that Labour's methods for providing it have frightened us off. We're in danger of electing a Conservative party for whom change means reversal. They cling to comfortingly retro policies like enforcing the wearing of blazers in schools, and make mumsy-sounding pronouncements on the state of the economy that, frightened by 10 years of "change" and "choice", we are meant to find soothing: "They didn't mend the roof when the sun was shining". It's change as restoration rather than advance. The Tories' bossiness might be a mirror image of Labour's micromanagement, but at least they have the decency to keep the velvet gloves on.

The language of change and choice is used to market the same tired old top-down dogma, which leaves those advocating genuinely radical and experimental measures with some delicate semantic line-walking to do. For all that I wince when Nick Clegg mentions the word "change", there really is no other way of putting it. The only way to guarantee the change and choice we aspired to in the 1990s and still timidly aspire to now, is to devolve, devolve and devolve again. Give individuals and institutions spending power and let them think for themselves about their own circumstances and problems.

This leads to natural experimentation and improvement, a proper socio-political ecosystem as opposed to a hothouse. Yes, it would result in some areas pursuing policies inimical to Labour- say, a locally elected health board keeping small GP surgeries open. And yes, it would also result in some places pursuing policies inimical to many CiF commenters - sorry, guys - say, a hospital engaging a private company to provide some of its services.

In both cases, good. Today's public services are the outcome of 30 years of "We need...!" thinking. The only way to break the cycle is to stop telling health and education institutions how to run themselves, to fund them amply, and to let them get on with it. And that requires - well, the c-word.